It’s been lovely to see that I’ve had a few more visitors to the blog this week, thanks in no small part to a name-check in an oDesk newsletter, which was a welcome surprise.  But I did get one less than welcome comment in my inbox that got me thinking.  You know who you are and where you’re from, so I won’t bother naming you publicly, but let’s just set the record straight: oDesk don’t pay me to write puff pieces for them or to link to them.  Anything I write here is my own opinion that I have reached with the application of some thought - this is perhaps the one place where my pen is not for hire.

However, I can see how it may be frustrating for people if they’ve been on oDesk for a while and have yet to pick up their first job.  I’m only a month into using the site myself, so I’m hardly an expert, but I do seem to be achieving a pretty good strike rate with my candidacies so here - for what it’s worth - is my approach to applying to jobs on oDesk.

• Only apply to jobs in which you can show relevant experience: if you can’t back up your claims with some solid examples, you probably won’t be hired
• For writing, always attach a suitable sample: don’t just stick a link in
• Look at the average hourly rate, and the average hourly rate of any interviewees: this should help guide you to pitching yourself at the right price
• Consider taking on a small, fixed-price, easy job in order to get your first feedback. oDesk occasionally post such things themselves - often listed as card-sorting exercises - and that first feedback rating can make all the difference
• Personalise your applications: make it clear you have read the ad by referencing requirements in your cover letter - according to those who’ve hired me, most people don’t bother to do this, so it’s a quick win
• Proof-read your cover letter before you send it: for writing and editing jobs in particular, good grammar and spelling are important and one of the best ways of demonstrating your standard is to consider your cover letter as an article for publication.  If need be, create your cover letter in MS Word and run a spell check on it before pasting it across to the application page
• Take as many relevant oDesk tests as you can, as this is objective, third-party proof of your claim to be an expert in a given field
• Complete as much of your profile as possible: think of this as your online CV, giving you the chance to show off some of the jobs you’ve done prior to oDesk
• Don’t post your ‘job wanted’ ad in the job openings: I’m constantly amazed at the number of job wanted ads that appear in the job openings mailer each day, often from people who use bad English to claim they have excellent English writting [sic] and gramer [re-sic].  This is not going to get you hired!
• Have some dignity: begging and pleading in your cover letter without providing good reasons for the person to hire you - experience, qualifications, etc - will not get you a job.  Developing your skills and being able to provide samples of your work, on the other hand, will
• Check to see if samples of your work are required in the ad and, if so, in what format.  Don’t bother applying unless you can include them as requested by the buyer
• Always go through the day’s job openings emails early: I’m most successful on those jobs where I’ve applied the same day the ad was posted.  From observation, something that’s been sitting around unfilled for a few days is not going to be filled, as the buyer has probably sourced staff elsewhere

This is not an exhaustive list - I’m quite sure something else will occur to me once my head hits my pillow tonight - but it should hopefully provide a good place to start.  Feedback is always welcome, and it would be lovely to hear that this had helped someone get themselves work

Happy freelancing!

m xxx

Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking it was time to get started working again.  Lots of potential upsides, it goes without saying, but since I don’t really want to put H into nursery full-time and I look like a bag of spanners on the best of days, a traditional job that needs me to go into an office somewhere is probably not going to be the best option.

On the other hand, I don’t really want to be doing Avon sales, or Innovations catalogue sales or similar because that still involves going out and the psoriasis is making me far too self-conscious for anything but handing over money at the average checkout.  And it’s been so long since I moved in some of my previous circles that I really don’t have current contacts.  All the recent stuff I’m allowed to talk about (no NDA, no Official Secrets) has been for S and his various ventures, so hardly an objective reference, even if the work I did was good.  Ah, what to do?

The only thing I’d been doing on even a semi-regular basis was writing articles on Helium.com.  It’s a great site and has had the virtue of giving me the courage to get off my backside and write again.  Some articles I’ve written because there was a gap in their database I could fill, others have been in their weekly writing competitions, where I’ve picked up the odd prize.  Pretty much all of them have earned me some click-through revenue in Helium’s revenue-sharing model, and it’s nice to be able to withdraw those funds to Paypal from time to time.

The kicker is that I only wrote a couple of the articles with SEO in mind, just to see if I could still do it.  Which is fine, since the two articles are ranked 1st and 2nd respectively for their keywords.  It’s no coincidence, therefore, that my article revenue on those pages is good.  So I set to thinking.  I can either optimise my other articles on Helium, submit the changes, and get only a share of the increased revenue, or I can rewrite them and post them on here.  Or I can rewrite them and post them to another site that gives me Adsense boxes on my articles with my own Publisher ID taking the revenue.

And then I had another thought, which is that all the Adsense and Helium revenues take a while to start flowing, and would require a major volume of articles to make a living from.  Was it time to stick my head above the parapet and see if someone would simply pay me to write things for them?  Like they used to in the good old days?

This has a lot of merits in theory: work as much as I want, when I want, with visibility over how much I’ll get paid and when.  But it also brought me back to my previous thoughts about the lack of a current network.  Ahem.  Well, thank God for the internet!  I’ve been so lacking in confidence it had never occurred to me that someone might be prepared to hire me without a personal recommendation for this kind of stuff, even though I objectively know that this happens every day to other people.  Gulp.

And so, with a little scouting about, I decided to experiment on just the one site, to see what kind of response I might get.  The site I chose was oDesk, largely because it had a few jobs listed I thought I might be able to do.

For those not familiar with oDesk, it’s a neat little site that puts providers and buyers in touch with each other and allows them to give mutual feedback to help future clients/providers make an educated decision about who they want to use.  Since each assignment also adds to your online CV, you gradually build up a body of work that also helps people see what you’ve been capable of before, and allows you, I suspect, to push your hourly rate up a bit.

The upside is that anyone can join in, and there are tests you can take to make up for a lack of oDesk experience.  The downside is that established buyers often won’t look at newbies for jobs, and the openness of the system - membership is free - means that there are many people offering their services for all kinds of jobs for which they aren’t qualified, so you have to try that much harder to get yourself noticed.  Also, competition from people in India and the Philippines lowers the pay rate and perceived value of some activities, so you don’t necessarily get as much as your experience might normally be worth.

However, the economy is in recession, the work is convenient, and you can pick and choose what you apply for, so the balance seems pretty good.

In the week since I joined oDesk, I’ve applied for some 20 jobs, and I am overwhelmed by the response.  Of the jobs I’ve applied for, 25% have taken me as far as shortlist stage: one buyer has said they want to use me in the future on a different project, 2 have given me jobs and 2 have taken me to shortlist and will be letting me know in the next couple of days whether I’ve got their gig.  And one other will be interviewing me at the end of February for an ongoing part-time job.

To say I’m gobsmacked would be something of an understatement.  I’ve ‘met’ some great people already, whether it’s Dip, who shares my love of research, Tom, who shares my sarcastic sense of humour or Emma, who not only has a similar sense of humour, but also some of the same professional experiences.  It’s been hugely encouraging, and I’m gradually gaining in confidence.

So hello world.  You’re no longer talking to a full-time mum, you’re talking to someone who makes their living as a writer again.  How good did it feel to write that?!!!